The Crapbox...Comic books found in the quarter bin or half-off store or the bargain box. The good, the bad and the really ugly. Get ready for a surprise. Updates EVERY Friday and Monday until the Crapbox runs dry. (never happen)

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Rock ‘N’ Roll Comics #2: Metallica

It’s like
VH-1’s Behind the Music but with 50%
less entertainment

In the late
80’s, Revolutionary Comics came up with a revolutionary idea: unauthorized bio
comics featuring popular rock and roll bands. A sure magnet for lawsuits (most
notably by New Kids on the Block – how are they rock again?), their title Rock
‘N’ Roll Comics became so popular it got spin off series featuring Pink Floyd
and Led Zepplin. There was even a documentary made about them called Unauthorized and Proud: Todd Loren’s Rock
‘N’ Roll Comics.

Never heard
of them? Me neither. Seems that Mötley Crue and Bon Jovi blocked them from
using standard distribution channels and these books ended up being sold almost
exclusively in record stores. If there had been no legal fight causing
publicity these books would have probably gone the way of the dodo by issue
number 3. The art is poor and the “unauthorized” bios are very spare. Let’s
take a standard panel featuring the introduction of James Hetfield:

I sure am
glad the book is relying on stereotypes to get its message across. Note that
the paper is almost newspaper quality. Metallica’s story runs 15 pages. Now I
would have thought it would have been difficult to find that much material to
write about the band before their Grammy win in 1991, the infighting while
making The Black Album, Lar’s battle with online file sharing program Napster
and their subsequent decline. I was right to think that.

What we get
is the band taking advantage of all-you-can-eat salad bars:

Mustaine
leaving to create Megadeath because of drunken argument:

and the death
by bus accident of Bassist Cliff Burton:

Burton’s death did provide me with previously
unknown information: If you’re in a band, your band mates get to determine what
is done with your ashes.

Ending the
band’s history in 1989 doesn’t do them justice. It seems the book was rushed out to take advantage of the market. A proper biographer
would know not to end at the beginning. As for the rest of the comic, it’s made
up of 6th grade humor strips that have no redeeming value at all. I’m dumber
for having read them.